I seem to be one of the few who generally has good experiences with Gamestop, so I would prefer they stay in business. And if that means they have to limit their expansion, ok. Just so long as my local store stays open.

And the mention in the article of the Borders closings brings salty tears to my eyes

Well, it makes sense. They should only keep growing if they want to completely over-extend themselves and have to start closing stores. There are already 17 stores within 10 miles of me, I'm not sure I really need more.

This can be viewed in one of two ways. Either they're not doing too well and they want to prevent themselves from overextending, or they're doing really well and they simply don't need to expand as they've reached a comfortable saturation point. The way I read it, they don't seem to be in trouble like the article seems to be implying. Not at the level of Borders anyway. Companies often go through periods of expansion and then don't for several years. It's nothing new. It's likely they knew they were going to do this from the beginning of an expansion period.

The third (and more likely) way to view it is they can see the writing on the wall with digital sales and are preparing for it in some way, either by ceasing spending on new chains to shift to a higher profit before selling off or by wisely retooling their model in an attempt to keep up with or even get ahead of the times in some clever fashion.

So it looks like they're preparing to sell off the company, then.

I'm sure they've been carefully watching Game and HMV in Europe, too. I guess a fourth option is that they're just being cautious, but that seems a little too vague.

I won't be surprised if this happens in Canuckistan too where the stores are still named Electronics Boutique. In the past few years they've been up against new, stiff competition from Futureshop and Best Buy who started offering preowned games. They still seem to be doing good business at all the stores I've visited recently in my city. Their preowned games are almost always the best deal for me because the membership card that I pay $5 annually for gets me an extra discount which usually beats FS and BB for price.

I'll personally won't be happy to see them go, because with few exceptions the stores and staff in my city are good. I especially like the store nearest to me where just about every staff member is a young women. It's probably just me, being middle aged and all, but talking with a young women who really knows her stuff about videogames never gets old.

The gamestop.ca online store for Canadian customers has being doing digital sales of PC games for about 2 years now. I think you can still buy the odd hardcopy PC at their online store, but they're the exception and about 99% is digital only. They also stopped shelving PC games in their EB stores in any significant way about 2 - 3 years ago.

With a new console cycle seemingly ready to start sometime within this two year window, it doesn't surprise me to see a company like Gamestop putting a hold on future expansion for now. If any time was the right time this seems to be just about it. Given Gamestop's dependence on their used games market (I've read reports that claim Gamestop make as much as half its net profit from used games and hardware sales), and given how likely it is (based on rumors) that future Microsoft and Sony consoles (and games) will be designed and developed from the ground up in such a way as to prevent (and/or heavily discourage) the mass proliferation of used games sales as much as humanly possible (increased digital sales being a big part of this), I've no doubt that Gamestop is simply hedging its bets for now until such time as the next generation of console comes into its own, and the possible future of Gamestop's used game market becomes more predictable.

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they already have an inside scoop about what to expect from the next gen Sony & Microsoft consoles, and that they'll be spending the next two years redesigning their own business to better handle the sudden change in how and where they make their money. I've no doubt that they can feel the hammer about to fall, and in that situation it would be foolhardy to charge forward in so much denial.